Circle the Date
by CanadianChick07
Summary: Every year on the same date, the memories of an ambush in Afghanistan haunt Halstead and he goes down the rabbit hole hard. Upstead. One shot.


Jay had stumbled home from a night at Molly's. He wasn't entirely sure why he had rounded up Atwater, Ruzek, Severide and a guy he knew from Vice, and decided to drink their faces off. He just felt this overwhelmingly urge to drink after he finished work. He felt like it was an anniversary of something but he wasn't sure what it was, and he didn't care to relive it or try and remember what it was.

It was at 2 am when he realized what anniversary it was and why he wanted to get blindly drunk. It was a nightmare and it was a vivid nightmare. It was the anniversary of the ambush in the Korangal Valley, one of the worst firefights of his time in the Army. It was one that he would never forget. He always had nightmares on the anniversary of it and this was the first year without Lindsay, to shake him from that. Well, the second, but the first he had gotten so blind drunk when he realized what day it was that he passed out drunk at Will's house and didn't wake up all night to remember the horrors. She had been his rock every year, every year that these memories came up. Usually Mouse and him would go get blind drunk at some bar, she would come pick them up and tell Voight what was up and he would give them the next day off. Every year like clock work. Last year, Olinsky clued in when Jay didn't show up at work and went looking for him, finding him at Will's, still passed out drunk on the couch.

* * *

 _"AMBUSH!"_

 _Then Sergeant Jay Halstead tucked in behind a wall of a mud shack house in the Korangal Valley. The Army Rangers were the first to do operations in the hostile valley in Afghanistan, next to Pakistan._

 _Shot after shot rang out, some coming from Army issued guns and some coming from Russian AK-47's that either the Taliban or native Korangalis possessed. Jay really didn't care who was shooting at him, he just wanted them all dead. And right now they were all dead._

 _Mouse was on the radio back to base. "We need an extract immediately. We're being ambushed."_

 _"I don't know if I can get a helo up right now and to your position," the voice on the other line side. "I'm going to try my hardest."_

 _Jay knew how fucked they were. They were SOL. And being fully ambushed. He stepped out from the wall and was met with what looked like the full town, well you could hardly call it a town, of men and they were coming at them full force. He emptied his magazine at them and managed to kill some of them before he ducked behind the wall to pop in another magazine._

 _"Helo is 40 mikes out," the voice on the other line said into Mouse's radio._

 _Jay, Mouse and their Lieutenant all looked at each other. They didn't have 40 minutes. Hell, they didn't have another 5 minutes before they were overtaken. And that was proven when Parker, a guy that Mouse and he had gone through Ranger training together with, was killed. Jay ran out and grabbed him by the back of his shirt and dragged him to the back of the shack. He was shot in the process._

 _"Fuck!" He said, as he laid Parker down, checking for a pulse._

 _"How bad is it?" their Lieutenant, Hart, asked._

 _"Through and through," Jay grimaced._

 _Hart took a look at it and confirmed. Their team's medic was nowhere to be found. The team had got split up. Parker, Mouse, Hart and Jay were on one side of the 'town'; their medic, Keizer, Holloway, Ponyboy as they called him and Quinn were on the other. And their radios were down and not even communicating back to base. They were seriously fucked. All they knew was a helo was 40 mins out but they didn't think they could survive that long._

 _Jay sat up against the back of the wall and stared at Parker's body and looked at his Lieutenant and back at Mouse and then down at the dead body in front of him. "I don't think we're making out of here alive."_

 _"I don't think so either," Mouse said, softly._

 _Even Hart, who had been one of the only officers Jay truly respected and one of the bravest men Jay fought alongside, agreed. "I don't know how we make it out of here alive. They are going to come at the back of this shed and come at us swinging."_

 _"If one of us does make it out alive, we tell each other's families what happened," Mouse said. They all agreed._

 _"And we aren't going down without a fight," Hart added. They all agreed to that._

* * *

Hailey Upton entered the squad room, coffee in hand, and looked around. No partner. She checked her phone. She wasn't late. She did usually beat Halstead to work because well, she was Upton, but she was running late this morning and the barista at her normal coffee shop to forever and a day, even in the drive thru. Nobody else looked concerned that Halstead wasn't there.

"Okay, ya'll seem to know where Halstead is. I know I'm the new girl here, even though I'm not new, so want to let me in on a secret or something?"

Voight came out of his office, Antonio stood up and sat on the side of his desk, facing her. "You might wanna sit down," Voight said.

"So you know where Halstead is?"

"Gonna assume, passed out drunk still," Antonio muttered.

Hailey looked at Voight and then looked at his second in command. "Excuse me?"

Voight pointed to Ruzek and Atwater who looked at little worse for wear. "He dragged the two of them out last night, along with Severide and Morrsion from Vice. Nobody thought anything of it; Atwater made sure Halstead got home safe because Jay was drinking a little more than normal."

"He was pounding them back," Ruzek said. "I've seen Jay drink but this was a whole 'nother level."

"He didn't say anything but he was drinking to forget something," Atwater added.

Antonio sighed and stood up and grabbed a calendar from Voight's office. "Last year, Olinksy, circled this day and put it in Voight's calendar. We all connected the dots on why the drinking binge last night when we got in this morning and saw Kev and Adam's faces."

"This has happened before?" Hailey asked.

Ruzek nodded. "Every year since I've known him."

Antonio nodded as well. "Me too. He was a little better with Mouse."

"Who's Mouse?"

Burgess chimed in. This was back in her patrol day but she enjoyed Mouse and was sad to see him go. "Jay's friend from Ranger days. He needed a job and was super good with tech things. Way too good. One day he decided to re-enlist. Broke Jay's heart."

"Both Halstead and Mouse had a little bit of a hard time readjusting to civilian life," Voight said. Re-adjusting was putting it mildly.

"So let me guess, last year was the first year that Mouse and Lindsay were both gone? Am I correct?"

Antonio nodded. "Olinsky figured it out out, found him at Will's, still passed out. He didn't have any memories of that night because he was too drunk to wake up to it."

"What memory is this exactly? Like what minefield am I walking into?" Upton asked.

"Ever heard of the Korangal Valley?" Voight asked.

She nodded. "Valley in Afghanistan, right before the Pakistan border. It was a disaster and the US pulled out."

The Sergeant leaned against the door frame of his office. "Before the United States decided to go in, the Rangers were the first to go in. And their first mission was an absolute fucking disaster. It was an ambush. Jay's unit was only the second unit to ever have done a mission in that valley so helicopter pilots were unwilling to fly into a valley that they didn't know. In the end, Jay, Mouse and one other guy ended up walking away out of an eight man team."

Upton sucked her breath in. No wonder why Halstead drank himself to forget on this day every year. "Did he said anything to you about it this year?"

Atwater shook his year. "I don't think he remembered what anniversary it was. I think something was just telling him to drink."

"Then I'm going over to his place to check on him," Hailey said as her grabbed her coffee.

Atwater look hesitant. "I don't know if that's the best idea."

She turned to Voight, who just shrugged. "You're his partner." She took that as permission to go.

* * *

She banged loudly on his door three times, before shouting at him. When that didn't work, she picked the lock. She had no idea what she'd find on the other side of that door, she had never dealt with Jay Halstead this badly in this state before. She had dealt with him when his head wasn't screwed on straight but PTSD Jay, she had no experience with.

Upton found him on the couch, sleeping. She poked his foot and made him wake up. "Brought you coffee and breakfast."

"What the fuck? Did you just break into my apartment?"

Upton shrugged. "You weren't answering the door. You have a key to my place because we are partners and I don't have one to yours so I thought that gave me license to pick your lock. It's really easy to, by the way."

"Fuck you, Hailey," Jay replied.

"Good morning to you, too," Hailey said, handing him the coffee, which he took, and then the breakfast burrito.

He took a sip of his coffee. "Did Voight send you?"

"No. I came on my own volition. You know, when you have a habit of doing the same thing on the same day, year after year, people take notice. And start circling the date on the calendar. Olinsky circled the date on the calendar and hung it on Voight's office."

Jay hung his head, almost in shame when he heard Alvin Olinsky's name. Al had understood when he found Jay, still passed out drunk, at Will's because he had been there too. He had those memories. "I just wanted to drink last night. Morrison said lets grab a beer and the next thing I know, Adam, Kev and Severide are with me and I am three sheets to the wind and Otis is threatening to cut me off."

"When did you start hanging out with Morrison anyways?" She always wondered that. Partly because she actually found the guy extremely good looking and knew him from her days in Robbery/Homicide and she wondered where Morrison and Jay would have crossed paths.

He just looked at her, like your-asking-this-now? "We were in the Academy together. Bumped into him when I had to requal on firearms last week." Well, that explained it.

Upton crossed her arms and stared at him as he was drinking his coffee and suddenly smelled how much he smelled of whatever he was drinking last night. "Go get in the fucking shower. You still reek of booze. Then we're talking about what we are doing next."

He came out of his bedroom, 10 minutes later with no shirt on and she somewhat had to reminder herself that that was her partner she was looking at and forced herseld to look away. He grabbed his coffee and his breakfast burrito and they sat in silence on the couch until he was done eating. "So, what we doing?" Halstead just looked at her.

She arched at eyebrow at him. "Well we sure as hell aren't going into work today because you would blow over. So, I guess we are playing hooky." Well, she was getting paid for playing babysitter and he was playing hooky, but not like that it matter that much in the grand scheme of things when you worked as much overtime as they did in Intelligence. "So what do you want to do to today?"

Halstead looked at her. "What do normal adults do on a day off?"

"Are you calling me not normal?"

He rolled his eyes at her. "You know what I mean."

"I don't actually know. Run errands?"

He shrugged. "I do need to go to the bank and the grocery store."

"Then we go to the bank and the grocery store," she grabbed her keys that were sitting on the table and held out her hand as and invitation for him to get his ass moving. He eventually grabbed his wallet from his kitchen counter, and followed her out the hallway.

It wasn't until he got into the passenger seat of his truck, because face it, she was driving because he would blow over, did he look at her truly. "Thanks," he said.

She didn't really say anything back until they got to the parking lot of the bank and grabbed his hand and looked him in the eye. "Jay, you know I'm here for the long haul. You know that, right?"

A true smile slowly crept across his face as he squeezed her hand softly. "I know."

* * *

 **AN: I know I don't usually write Upstead but after seeing the promo for next week and some alcohol, this came out at 2 am. So excuse any mistakes because this truly was written at 2 am.**


End file.
